And he continued to play.

“Mr. Knight?”

“You can stay here and keep me company, Sam, unless you’re gonna call me ‘Mr. Knight.’ The name is Byron.”

“What happened after your solo album? I mean, I don’t want to pry, but you just disappeared. Everyone thought you were dead.”

He stopped playing, flexed his fingers, and adjusted the tuning on the ‘E’ string. “Seen any other dead rock stars tonight, Sam?”

My mouth went dry. “Yessir.”

“I’m guessing there’s more than a few legends milling around out there in the shelter, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone in that crowd seem…I dunno…a little out of place?”

“Billie Holiday.”

He looked up at me. “No shit? Wow. She actually showed up this time.”

“Why her?”

“Because I loved that voice, Sam. Never has there been a sadder voice in music, never.”

I finally pulled a chair away from the Reverend’s desk and sat across from Knight. “They told us that they weren’t ghosts, that they were—”

“—let me guess. They called themselves ‘ulcerations’?”

“How did you know?”

“Because I’m the source.”

I stared at him.

“I’m guessing that doesn’t really tell you anything, does it?”

“Not really.”

He downed the rest of the brandy, looked at the empty glass, and said, “I’ll tell you one hell of a story, Sam. You’ll be the only person I’ve ever told it to, but it’s gonna cost you one more glass of the good Reverend’s hooch.”

I poured him one more glass. He sipped at it, and then played a little as he spoke.

True to his word, he told me one hell of a story.

7

“It was right after our second album, Redundant Refugee came out. We were doing well enough, opening for bigger bands, being called back for a few encores every night. Things were moving along. We’d recorded maybe half the songs for the Mudman album but I still had no idea what we were going to do for the concept piece. We wanted something long, a whole side of a record, and we were beating our heads against a wall. We decided to take two weeks off from the project and each other.

“I was involved with a model at the time—you might remember her, Veronique? Very hot at the time. She talked me into going to India with her. She was making her first stab at acting, a cameo in a big-budget art film.

“I hated almost every minute I was there. The humidity was oppressive as hell and it seemed that, regardless of how far away from the cities you were, the sewer stink always found you. There were areas near the hotel where we were staying where the garbage and shit—and I’m talking real, honest-to-God human waste—reached to my knees. But, man, there were places in that country that were so beautiful—the old Hindu temples and shrines, for instance—but I never could decide whether that odd, damaged beauty was a result of my being stoned most of the time or not. But the thing is, there was this one afternoon when I was stone-cold sober that I remember clearer than anything.